Bexar should reject abusive lawsuits

Red McCombs, For the Express-News

Published
4:34 pm CDT, Wednesday, May 11, 2016

The proposal that sits now with Bexar County doesn’t meet the standard put into law by Texas legislators. We cannot become a world-class city if our government leaders attack job providers with unnecessary lawsuits that are more about the money than righting a wrong. less

The proposal that sits now with Bexar County doesn’t meet the standard put into law by Texas legislators. We cannot become a world-class city if our government leaders attack job providers with unnecessary ... more

Photo: Express-News File Photo

Photo: Express-News File Photo

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The proposal that sits now with Bexar County doesn’t meet the standard put into law by Texas legislators. We cannot become a world-class city if our government leaders attack job providers with unnecessary lawsuits that are more about the money than righting a wrong. less

The proposal that sits now with Bexar County doesn’t meet the standard put into law by Texas legislators. We cannot become a world-class city if our government leaders attack job providers with unnecessary ... more

Photo: Express-News File Photo

Bexar should reject abusive lawsuits

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Bexar County leaders have a wonderful opportunity to come down on the side of common sense by rejecting a proposal to open a rash of questionable lawsuits against leading San Antonio businesses.

The potential lawsuits would be against 40 businesses, including major San Antonio employers, over 304 leaking petroleum storage tank, or LPST, sites, past and present, owned by those companies. Interestingly, the majority of the sites targeted for litigation, 294, are already closed, including 185 that have been closed for at least 15 years.

This proposal is contrary to efforts at the state level to balance litigation with good-faith efforts to clean up environmental pollution. Some suspect a money grab while others decry the “ambulance chasing” tactics of this effort.

The Bexar County Public Works Department is neither fooled by the merits, or lack thereof, of this proposal nor cowed by those behind it, and has questioned several aspects of the lawsuit plan.

Rightly noting that many of the sites targeted for litigation are not only closed but already cleaned up, they questioned, as reported in the San Antonio Express-News, whether the “litigation proposal is nothing more than a mercenary, moneymaking venture for the county,” noting “if the litigation goes forward, the county would split any collected fines 50-50 with the state, and pay contingency fees” to the attorneys.

Commissioner Kevin Wolff was blunt and on point: “I see this as nothing more than ambulance chasing at a different level. It’s not fixing anything. It’s just a way to try and generate fees for a (law) firm, cloaked in ‘revenue for the county’ and ‘protecting the environment.’”

Texas lawmakers have made it abundantly clear that this type of abusive litigation is not welcome in Texas.

In 2015, they approved common-sense changes to Texas law that allows local governments to seek substantial penalties to stop and deter environmental violations, but ended their ability to use lawsuits to recovery unlimited penalties when an alleged polluter has notified the state of a violation and worked in good faith with the state to clean up the mess.

Importantly, the 2015 change does not prevent a local government from recovering actual damages from an environmental violation or an affected individual from filing suit for injury or property damage from a violation. Anyone, whether an individual or business, who pollutes the environment should be required to clean the site and pay damages to people who were harmed and to the local government where the violation occurred. Lawmakers preserved these remedies in full, but the proposal that sits now with Bexar County doesn’t pass that test.

Why should our local citizens care? In a word: jobs. Excessive or abusive litigation hurts jobs, plain and simple. We cannot achieve our vision of San Antonio as a world-class city if our government leaders attack job providers with unnecessary and abusive lawsuits that are more about the money than righting a wrong.

Texas lawmakers in 2015 struck the right balance between vigorously enforcing environmental standards and encouraging good faith remediation whenever it is necessary. Our local leaders must do the same and reject the proposal from state Sen. Carlos Uresti and attorney Justin Hill.

Red McCombs is chairman of the Political Action Committee for the Texas Civil Justice League.